We’ve already seen some great applications built using OpenTok and now we’re opening up our first developer contest to see what other great ideas you have.

The GRAND PRIZE? We will promote the winning application to our 2 MILLION TOKBOX VIDEO CHAT users when we close down our service, giving you a chance to build a business overnight.

The winning application, judged by the TokBox Team, will take a unique and innovative approach to the video chat market, leveraging the OpenTok API but potentially mashing it up with other APIs out there. Anything from Twitter and Facebook to Twilio and more. Below you’ll find some more examples to get your creative juices flowing.

So, if you’re a budding entrepreneur who wants the chance to build a business overnight, get playing with OpenTok and see what you can create.

Here’s how it works.

Over the next four weeks we will hold a series of mini-contests, each one with a prize (details below). You can enter as many times as you want in any week and you can even enter every week if you want. At the end of four weeks those winners will be judged along side the “best of the rest” to select the winner of the grand prize.

The first deadline is Monday February 14th and our team and community will be on hand via our Google Group to help you out and we can’t wait to hear what you come up with.

More details of the competition are below.

Competition dates

The competition will run over a total of 6 weeks.

There will be a winner each week and they, along with the “best of the rest” will become our finalists. Each of the finalists will then have time to work more on their app before they submit the final version of their app on Monday March 21st

Week 1

· Deadline 11.59pm Monday February 14th

· Prize: Android Tablet

Week 2

Deadline 11.59pm Monday February 21st

Prize: Microsoft Kinect

Week 3

Deadline: 11.59pm Monday February 28th

Prize: Boxee Box

Week 4

Deadline: 11.59pm Monday March 7th

Prize: Apple iPad

Deadline for all finalists to submit final versions of their apps 11.59pm Monday March 21st

The final winner will be notified Wednesday March 23rd and will work with TokBox to optimize their application before we promote it to our user base on April 5th

The beady-eyed amongst you will have noticed that the winners of the earlier weeks will have more time to tweak their app so that’s an incentive to get building sooner rather than later!

Criteria for winning application

We will be judging all applications according to the following criteria:

Most differentiated approach to the video chat/video conferencing market

Innovative use of the OpenTok API

Innovative user experience and feature set

You are free to take advantage of any other APIs or technologies that are available to you. Some of the ones that we think it would be cool to see are Twilio, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Some seeds of inspiration

Check out some of the apps that have already been built using OpenTok: